


no matter what the storybooks say

by wardo_wedidit



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: 5+1 Things, Books, Canon Universe, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Married Life, Reading, Reading Aloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-22 20:24:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19994620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wardo_wedidit/pseuds/wardo_wedidit
Summary: “What if I read that too?” Patrick asks one day over breakfast, setting David’s coffee down carefully on the table as he watches his husband flip his book over to concentrate on his breakfast.David shoots him a startled look. “Do you want to?”Or, five times Patrick reads a book of David’s, and one they read together.





	no matter what the storybooks say

**Author's Note:**

> This is very possibly the most indulgent thing I have ever written, but it is filled with love! 
> 
> First of all, do not worry if you have not read the books! (It is not really about the books!) It is about the domesticity and the intimacy and the trust!! 
> 
> Second of all, I have to thank Lena (who is amazing, and one of the best people to discuss books with!) for this, because we have literally been having some form of conversation about this premise since like, April or something. I hope we continue to discuss what David and Patrick think about our favorites for a long time! 
> 
> A big thank you to [Claire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cromarty/pseuds/cromarty) as well, for helping me with the finer details of Patrick's baseball opinions. She also wrote me a [beautiful fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19890940) about David and Patrick telling each other bedtime stories (which kind of got me thinking about how this fic might actually work) and is so warm. 
> 
> Title and quotes are from _The Princess Bride_ by William Goldman; the books they read are listed by title and author.

//

_”There have been five great kisses since 1642 B.C., when Saul and Delilah Korn’s inadvertent discovery swept across Western civilization. (Before then couples hooked thumbs.) And the precise rating of kisses is a terribly difficult thing, often leading to great controversy, because although everyone agrees with the formula of affection times purity times intensity times duration, no one has ever been completely satisfied with how much weight each element should receive. But on any system, there are five that everyone agrees deserve full marks._

_This one left them all behind."_

//

1\. _In the Woods_ by Tana French

David reads long, thick volumes that Patrick tends to think of as impenetrable, though he doesn’t know why.

It might be that David doesn’t really seem to have a type when it comes to what he reads. Or at least not one that Patrick can figure out. He devours fiction, memoirs, poetry, and nonfiction on a wide range of topics all with the same ferocity.

Patrick asked him about it, once. David had gone kind of shy, shrugging in a way that was trying too hard to be casual. “In New York, so much of my life revolved around art,” he says, not quite meeting Patrick’s eyes. “There aren’t any galleries to go to here or museums to visit, really, but when I’m reading… I don’t know. I get the same feeling I used to get when I was looking at a painting I loved.”

His mouth twists to one side and his cheeks flush a little, shrugging again, and Patrick grabs his hand, swinging it between them, and gives it a squeeze.

Patrick reads too, but he doesn’t have nearly the range David does. His collection is small and almost all nonfiction: some newer business philosophy books, some old textbooks, a few self-help books that are leftover from when he was with Rachel. He’d wanted to leave them behind when he moved but couldn’t bring himself to, couldn’t abandon those pages when he still remembers the lines that turned into mantras in his head, underlined carefully in blue ink.

They share a bookshelf in their apartment. Patrick had it commissioned from Jake, which had made David roll his eyes. “I just feel like that’s bad luck for a first anniversary present,” he’d said, but his lips were pressed together in that way that meant he was trying really hard not to smile or laugh, so Patrick thought it was probably okay. He watched the way David ran his first two fingers over the dark wood slowly and lightly, and only then was Patrick sure that it was.

Together they’d organized the shelves, moving David’s worn copies from boxes and crates and bantering back and forth about how they should be organized: David argues for subject, and then alphabetical by author, while Patrick contends that alphabetical overall is by far the most effective method. He does mention the possibility of doing it by color, just to see the way David’s head nearly explodes at the suggestion. A flash of memory had hit him then, of living with Rachel, waking up panicky in the middle of the night and trying to build a shitty IKEA shelf to burn off some of his frantic energy, but it melted away just as quickly as it came when David tried to put Jackie Robinson’s autobiography, _I Never Had It Made_ , in the sports section instead of in biography and memoir. So Patrick jumped back into the fray, not giving it another thought.

David is also an avid user at the Schitt’s Creek library, a tiny little house with an unassuming sign out front a ways down the main drag. When they first started dating, David would sometimes ask if they could swing by on their way back from a date to pick up something he had on hold. When he still lived at the motel, he was known to spend his afternoons there if he just needed some quiet, and Patrick never saw him there but he can envision it: David curled up in a chair by a window, sunlight streaming in over him, feet tucked underneath him as he quietly turned the pages.

Once, after they were engaged, Patrick offered to just give in and pay the fee so that David could get a card for the library system in Elmdale, because he’s always lamenting that they get the new releases faster and _it’s just not fair, people here read too!_ But when he mentioned it offhand to David, he couldn’t have been more against it.

“I’ve cultivated a really good relationship with Ms. Stafford,” he said, tone sharp. “I would never go behind her back like that.”

Patrick backed off, didn’t ask, didn’t put even put together who that might be until the next time they drop by to pick up a book David has on hold. He was watching David chat animatedly with the librarian at the desk, face lit up in a way it usually isn’t, when he finally noticed her nametag, right there in tidy little type: Ms. Stafford.

“What are you reading?” he sometimes asks, when they’re both in bed and his head is resting on David’s chest, David’s fingers carding through his hair, and David will sometimes tell him. Sometimes they’re long, winding fantasies that start out with David saying _okay, I just have to explain the family tree first,_ and other times it’s a mystery, where David will covertly flip a couple pages ahead because he’s too excited to wait and see what happens next. Sometimes it’s even poetry.

Regardless of what it is, Patrick could listen to him talk about it for hours.

“What if I read that too?” Patrick asks one day over breakfast, setting David’s coffee down carefully on the table as he watches his husband flip his book over to concentrate on his breakfast.

David shoots him a startled look. “Do you want to?”

“Yes,” Patrick says without skipping a beat. _I want to know the things that take up space in your head,_ he thinks, but doesn’t say.

“Patrick,” David says with a gentle, fond smile. “You don’t even know what it’s about.”

Patrick shrugs, tries not to feel silly or defensive. It’s David, after all. “You’ve read it before,” Patrick says, because he pays attention. He remembers seeing the cover on the nightstand in his old apartment. “You like it. I wanna like it too.”

David’s face goes soft. “Okay,” he agrees.

It’s a crime novel, David explains that night in their bed, “but it’s incredibly character-driven and literary filled with rich backstory and—”

“It’s okay,” Patrick laughs tenderly, peeling David’s fingers off the spine. He’s clutching it protectively with a look Patrick recognizes from their early days when David would mention Julia Roberts or Mariah Carey, like he’s afraid Patrick will laugh or make fun. “You don’t have to sell me on it,” he says, brushing a gentle thumb over David’s cheek, and watches David’s flush bloom underneath his skin.

Patrick finds it very difficult to put down over the next couple of days. He gets caught up in the haunting mystery but the relationships even more, in Rob’s anxiety and his sometimes inexplicable decisions. He sneaks a paragraph when David’s out grabbing lunch and the store is slow, a page or two in the ten minutes it takes David to change before they go out to dinner. He watches David try not to watch him reading it, and savors the idea that David might want to be inside his head just as badly.

At the end of the night, he’ll set it down gently on his bedside table and tell David where he is, and David will ask him what he thinks is going to happen, and Patrick will tell him. David is a great listener, never gives anything away but asks all these smart, probing questions that make Patrick think about the book in a new way.

The ending hits him hard. He didn’t expect to be so sad about Rob and Cassie breaking apart, the way Rob’s life runs off the rails of what he always wanted. He certainly hadn’t expected to cry at a detective novel, and tells David so as he brushes the stray tears off Patrick’s cheeks.

“It wouldn’t have ended well either way,” David says with a soft smile, laughing quietly. “They work together.”

Patrick frowns, turning away and lying down on their bed, arms crossed. “ _We_ work together and I think it turned out okay,” he says mulishly, not caring that he sounds like a child.

“Oh my god, but we don’t solve _murders_ , Patrick!” he laughs, more openly now, lying down too so he can curl himself around Patrick’s frame, pressing soft kisses to the back of his neck. Patrick relaxes into him slowly.

//

2\. _Gone Girl_ by Gillian Flynn

“Oh,” Patrick says when he picks up the next one. It’s on his side of the bed, David must have put it there while Patrick was washing his face. “I’ve heard of this one!” he calls over his shoulder.

David leans his hip against the bathroom doorway and smiles around his toothbrush. Patrick runs his fingers over the dark, glossy cover, flips through the pages. He emerges a minute or so later with minty fresh breath, rubbing at Patrick’s shoulder with familiarity. “I thought it would be a good pick since you liked the mystery in the last one.”

Patrick curls up on his side of the bed and opens it, flipping to the first page. David shoots him a dubious look as he pulls back the comforter.

“You’re starting it now?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, looking at him with a furrowed brow and a slightly amused expression. “Just a chapter or two before I go to sleep.”

David raises his brows but doesn’t say anything, leaning in for a quick goodnight kiss and turning out the light on his side and snuggling in. Patrick rubs his hand in slow circles over David’s back, listens as his breathing starts to even out and slow down. He lets himself tumble forward into the turbulent marriage of Nick and Amy Dunne.

“Oh my god,” he hears a couple hours later from David’s croaky, sleep-worn voice. Except when he looks up, it’s been more than a few hours, because the soft light of morning is peeking in between the blinds and their alarm clock says 5 AM.

“...Oh,” he says, moving to rub over his eyes where his vision has admittedly gone a little bit bleary.

“ _Come_ here,” David says decisively, a laugh hiding in the words, and he’s grabbing Patrick’s hand and pulling him into his chest, taking the book from Patrick’s hold.

“But I only had 60 pages—”

“And they’re not going anywhere,” he says, nuzzling his chin into Patrick’s hair. He yawns, and Patrick catches it too, and suddenly his eyes feel like they’re sore with exhaustion and his whole body aches.

“Can’t believe you,” David murmurs. His hands are moving up and down, slow strokes across Patrick’s arm, the way he does when he’s not quite awake but still wants to be touching him.

“Mm,” he agrees, because he can’t believe himself either. “You’d never frame me for murder, right?” The words are soft, barely whispered into the delicate dawn.

A laugh rumbles out of David’s chest, a slow, tender thing. Patrick is out before he hears the answer.

The next day, David makes them eggs and toast and coffee at noon when they wake for good, so that Patrick can curl up and plow through the ending. He brings their plates over to the couch and Patrick holds his hand. He has to let go of it every couple minutes to turn the page, but he always gives it back.

//

3\. _Giovanni’s Room_ by James Baldwin

“How about something important?” Patrick asks a few days later. David is poring over the bookshelf, biting his lip, a wrinkle between his brows as he tries to decide.

“I happen to think Amy Elliot Dunne is very important,” he shoots back without missing a beat, because they’ve spent the past couple days going round and round on this point. David had said _I’ll defend her to the death!_ and Patrick said _But don’t you think she needs therapy? Or something?_ and David said _Well, doesn’t everyone?_ and Patrick said _I’m just saying, in a world of limited resources, I think she should be the first in line,_ and then David kissed him because it was all a game anyway, wasn’t it, and sometimes David let him win.

“I’m not starting that again,” he tries this time.

“What do you mean, ‘important?’” David asks after a beat, but Patrick just shrugs, lets David interpret as he chooses. David rolls his eyes at the lack of direction as he turns back around, and Patrick hides a grin. _Important to you_ echoes loudly in his head.

David picks Baldwin. Baldwin is important the way voting is important, the same way Patrick thinks about public libraries and organized protest and tax law as important. So he’s intimidated, but it’s a thin volume of which David has broken the spine. The pages are worn and soft, the edges are yellowed. So Patrick has to try.

“His name is David!” he says with delight when he starts it, one lazy afternoon when they’re tangled up on the couch, from where he’s tucked under David’s arm. Leaves are starting to fall outside, golds and reds and oranges, and Patrick has pulled on one of David’s sweaters because it’s not quite cold enough yet to turn on the heat.

David’s eyes flick up from his own book in his lap and flushes at the sound of Patrick’s excitement, biting the inside of his cheek. “Mhm,” he allows, noncommittal, but doesn’t look as excited about it as Patrick wants him to be.

Still, he thrills when David and Giovanni meet, reads the scene in the bar and feels his heart jump in his chest at the way David says _I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel,_ and Giovanni says _And when you have waited—has it made you sure?_ He relishes their first night, the way David falls into his arms and thinks: _With everything in me screaming No! yet the sum of me sighed Yes._

He knows it doesn’t end well. The book makes it clear from the start. Still, the more he reads on, the queasier he feels—there’s the untimely arrival of the fianceé and the resulting breakup, which unsettle him moreso the murder, the execution and the guilt. But most of all, there is the way Giovanni says _Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?_

It’s a fast read, and for that, Patrick is grateful. He frowns when he finishes only a couple days later, setting it carefully on top of the shelf.

“Well?” David prompts from his side of the bed, looking up from where he’s reading a paperback as thick as a brick, cover emblazoned with a black and white closeup of a man whose face is contorted in what looks like pain.

“It is important,” Patrick says diplomatically after he crawls into bed, pulling the covers up.

“And?” David prompts with a crooked smile.

“He’s an incredible writer,” Patrick allows, watching David as he sets his own book aside to slide down beside him, so that they’re facing each other like parentheses.

He tucks his hands under his pillow, voice quieter this time. “But?”

Patrick still hasn’t sorted out all the ways he feels about it in his head, the tangle of messy emotion inside of him. He tugs on his hip and throws a leg over David’s, drawing him closer, nudging his jaw with his nose and pressing a kiss over his pulse.

“I like my Davids happy.”

David makes an offended, shocked noise, pulling back. “You think _I’m_ David?”

Patrick widens his eyes in false innocence, all tease. “Who else would you be?” he asks, watching David open his mouth for what’s sure to be a very indignant reply, so he leans in to kiss him before the words can come out.

They lose the thread of conversation in a tangle of limbs and kisses for a bit, because Patrick loves to distract him with his mouth, his touch, to make him quake and cry out and lose himself in something outside of his head. He likes to see the way David’s brain slowly lets go of everything else but him, the way he relaxes a little differently when it’s over. There’s something more settled about it.

Patrick crawls back up his body after, folds himself into David’s side, head rising and falling with David’s heavy breathing. David reaches over to turn out the light and then returns to him, easy as anything.

“I don’t want to be David,” he murmurs into the darkness. He feels David’s fingers tangle in his hair, stroking in gentle, repeated motions.

“You’re not,” David says.

“And I don’t want _you_ to be Giovanni,” he says, thinking of how close David could have come to a life of perpetual hurt and ruin.

There’s a breath of silence, longer than the last. “I’m not,” he says.

He clenches his jaw and then lets out a breath, frustrated by the way the words are coiled and snarled in his brain. It’s a mess and he doesn’t like when it’s a mess—likes when it’s clean, bright, organized. “I just—wish they lived in a world where they could have been happy,” he says, and that’s the core of it, really, the God’s honest truth of it all.

When Patrick was a kid, some of his cousins and uncles said he was too tenderhearted. He cried when the fireflies they trapped in a jar died, when he dropped his ice cream cone, when his grandma fell and they had to call an ambulance. He wonders if that’s what David’s thinking now, a little bit, that Patrick is too tenderhearted for his big, important books.

“Sweetheart,” he says, voice breaking on the word, shuffling down in the bed so he’s nose to nose with Patrick. And then he just holds him, lets Patrick burrow into him and hide his face in David’s neck and breathe through it. They fall asleep like that, twisted together so that Patrick doesn’t quite know where he ends and David begins.

//

4\. _The Time Traveler’s Wife_ by Audrey Niffenegger

“What about something with magic?” Patrick suggests next, because he remembers that from when he used to ask David about what he was reading. Books where families are cursed for generations, books where the price of love means dying an untimely death.

David casts his glance over to where Patrick’s making dinner, raising an eyebrow like it’s not a bad idea. With that prompt, it doesn’t take more than a minute for him to pull one off the shelf in a smooth, fluid motion, handing it to Patrick as he finishes putting the silverware on the table.

“Magical realism,” he says, casually massaging Patrick’s shoulder with one hand even as he reaches for his wine glass on the counter with the other. “I thought I’d be nice and ease you in,” he teases, lips quirked to one side, teasing. But Patrick agrees, has seen some of the high fantasy David will occasionally check out and concurs that this is probably the best option.

It’s completely different, for sure. He enjoys the way the book thinks about the real-life implications of someone who’s tossed back and forth in time against their will. The medications and the injuries and the uncertainty of it all. Still, it takes him longer to get through because of something in the tone of it… it manages to be mourning and hopeful at the same time, almost an elegy.

There are parts of it he doesn’t particularly like—the age difference in some of their meetings, for one—but there’s something he envies about Clare, the way she always knows what she’s going to get. Who she’s going to get. Having a list of important dates in her life ahead of time, knowing these are the days her life will change, this is what she has in front of her.

“Don’t you think that would mess with your head?” David asks him one morning. He’s folding laundry at the foot of the bed, admiring Patrick where he’s sprawled between the sheets. It’s odd that David’s out of bed before him, but he’s _very_ particular about laundry and how much time it can spend in the dryer before it gets wrinkled (under five minutes, apparently), and so he pulled on a pair of soft joggers and made Patrick a tea this morning before Patrick has even risen.

“What do you mean?” he asks, caught between the pages and the image before him, the pillow creases he can still see just slightly on David’s cheek.

“I don’t know, I just feel like… if it were me, I’d spent the rest of my life like, sleepwalking, or something, because I’d put so much expectation into that list of days, and then I’d—miss things. I think,” he says, mouth twisted to the side, gaze falling back to pairing the socks together.

Patrick thinks of the teen he’d been—the one so tangled up in a sea of feelings he couldn’t comprehend, who decided to just ignore them all and focus on sports, on school, on making his parents proud and above all, on being normal. “I mean, I probably could have used any guidance from the future I could get,” he says, reaching across to hold the warm mug in his hands, watching David frown down at the tangled pile of clothes.

“It’s like she said,” he continues, desperate to do anything to right his husband’s expression, “‘Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?’” Patrick knows a lot about being just okay. And now, he knows a lot about being extremely happy. And he wants David to know that.

David meets his gaze, eyes warm with understanding, though he’s pretending to concentrate fully on folding a new sweater he ordered off a luxury consignment app. His fingers are careful, purposeful, and Patrick watches them. He shrugs again. “I think it would have been… good for me to have something definite to look forward to. Not just the days, but. You know. A husband, a business, a life.”

David closes his eyes and shakes his head a little, the way he does when he’s overwhelmed by Patrick, and Patrick grins. He sets his mug down on the bedside table, reaching forward to wrap his fingers around David’s wrist, watching the hairs stand up on his skin in response. David runs cold, and Patrick is still bed-warm, and David follows when he tugs him forward and back into the sheets. Their feet are tangled together, and Patrick presses kisses to David’s nose, his cheeks, his ear, his eyelids, and the book gets lost between the sheets for a little while.

//

5\. _Crush_ by Richard Siken

“You read all that poetry,” Patrick suggests when he’s done and David is again squinting at their bookshelf. “What about one of those books?”

David’s head pops up, surprised. “You want to try poetry?”

Patrick shrugs from where he’s packing their lunches in the kitchen (on days when David works and he doesn’t, he’s been known to leave him a note on a napkin, on occasion) and tries not to feel out of his comfort zone just because the last time he read any was probably in high school. He doesn’t really have any expectations for it one way or the other, but he has seen David read poetry on rainy days, and he has loved it.

There’s something about the way he curls up on one end of the couch, like he’s trying to make himself as small as possible. If Patrick’s on the other end, he’ll immediately move to tuck his feet under Patrick’s thighs for warmth. He rests a pencil between the pages, making light markings under lines and scrawling in the margins, focusing hard. He couldn’t explain why, but it makes Patrick feel so protective of him, of this quiet softness no one else gets to see.

David slides a slim volume out of place and leaves it on the countertop without another word. _Crush_ , it says, and has a photo of a man’s fingers on his lips, wet and dirty and caught mid-motion.

It stays there on the counter until they get home that evening. The first thing he notices is that David’s copy is well-loved, to say the least. Maybe even more so than the other books Patrick’s read. It’s all marked up inside, and there are little gaps where you can tell it’s been propped open more than other places. It must hold a lot for David, he thinks. He wants to figure out why.

When he first mentioned poetry to David, he had been thinking of Emily Dickinson, or Robert Frost, or Walt Whitman. Things he read in school and had explained to him, things he was asked to figure out like they were a puzzle. But this isn’t like that at all, it isn’t a formula—if wheelbarrow is x, then white chickens are y—they’re more like little snapshots, like a scene or a thought process or a dream. There are some he can’t really make heads or tails of, as if he’s hearing only one end of a conversation on the phone, but even then a line or two will catch him unaware like a punch in the gut.

As he works through it the next couple nights, he realizes he loves how gay it is. It is unabashedly, straightforwardly gay, and drenched in emotion, no doubt about it. But it’s also filled with panic in nearly every syllable, with desperation, with hatred and fear, and Patrick’s stomach curdles to think of David reading this, in his old life. Reading lines like _But damn if there isn’t anything sexier / than a slender boy with a handgun, / a fast car, a bottle of pills_ and _A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river / but then he’s still left / with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away / but then he’s still left with his hands._

He has a few favorites—“Scherazade,” a dreamy plea for stories, “Visible World” in all its vivid, descriptive glory, “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” with a tone of careful hope and resolution, even “Wishbone,” where they’re gay cowboys. There are lines that he knows will stick with him: _Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you_ and _He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand_. He thinks he’s going to have trouble picking a favorite, and he knows David will ask.

But he nears the end, and there: a poem third from last, the final part of “You Are Jeff” which is not just marked up and underlined but also _dog-eared_. Patrick’s never seen David dog-ear a book, not ever. He jumps ahead a little, too curious to wait, and as soon as he reads the first line, his heart is in his throat.

_You’re in the car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in the car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for._

He reaches to wipe the tears off his cheeks when it’s over and looks at the pencil lines underneath. They’re darker than the others in the book, painstakingly straight, and Patrick isn’t a gambler but he’d bet everything that this one has been reread and marked up more recently than the others.

There are still two poems left but Patrick closes the book, striding across the apartment to the bathroom, where David is. He pulls open the door to see David applying his eye serum, his skin still visibly pink from the shower, his hair air-drying. David gapes at him for a second in the mirror, a confused “What?” falling out of his mouth, but Patrick just steps in close and kisses him, an arm winding around his waist. He can feel the warmth of David’s skin through his thin t-shirt, and they’re stepping on each other’s feet and one of them may trip over the pooled bottoms of Patrick’s pajama pants when they separate, but for now David is kissing him breathlessly back. It’s so needy, so desperate, and Patrick still feels choked up, has to pull away to breathe harshly into David’s neck.

David runs a comforting hand up and down his back, voice a little wobbly. “Is everything okay?” he asks, and Patrick doesn’t know what to say. He feels so seen in that moment, by the poem and by David, just nods against David’s skin and lets his husband hold him until he stops shaking.

It’s a long hug, but David doesn’t seem to mind.

//

+1. _The Princess Bride_ by William Goldman

“Just one,” Patrick insists from where he’s sitting down cross-legged on the floor in front of their bookshelf, pulling out each title to examine one by one. “There has to be at least a single book in here that has a happy ending, David.”

“Okay, but in _The Time Traveler’s Wife_ —”

“Yes, I know, he saw her one last time but that doesn’t make it happy, okay, it just makes it a little bit less than absolutely devastating.”

David frowns and sits down on the hardwood floor next to Patrick so their knees are touching. “I don’t read them because they’re sad,” he says softly, defensively, and Patrick stops and slows down. He turns to look at him fully, because Patrick’s learned that sometimes David needs his full attention exactly when he would rather squirm away from it the most.

“I know you don’t,” he says, plaintive. “I’ve known you for a minute, you know, I know you like a lot of different things. And I’ve liked elements of everything you’ve given me. I just want one happy ending. Because I want to know those live up there in your brain too.”

The tips of David’s ears go tinged with pink at that. His face morphs into an expression of understanding for just a split second before going back to something more familiar, something more teasing and knowing. “You still think I might frame you for murder, don’t you.”

Patrick sighs as he returns to the task at hand, even though it’s mostly show—they’re just as bad as each other when it comes to undercutting a genuine moment. “David.”

“Alexis can’t shoot you in the woods, Patrick, she would never even _touch_ a gun!”

“David.”

“And I think even Schitt’s Creek has outlawed execution by hanging.”

“ _David,_ ” he says again, only now it’s a laugh. David’s face is expectant and somehow young, waiting for Patrick to play along. “David,” he repeats, softer this time, “I will come back from the dead for you,” and he watches his husband _flush_ , frozen, pretty and perfect.

Then he lunges forward, kissing Patrick so hard he nearly falls back. The kiss is breathless and frantic, like he wants to taste the Siken in his mouth. It’s in direct contrast with the way he’s cradling Patrick’s face in his hands, gently and with care.

He pulls away slowly, pleased, and then joins Patrick in examining the books on the shelves.

“Oh my god,” he finally murmurs, pulling out a thick volume. It has one of those heavy spines, like a storybook, and gold-rimmed pages. He flips it over and Patrick can finally see the title: _The Princess Bride_.

“You know, I never saw that movie,” Patrick says honestly, and David gasps, harsh and dramatic.

“We’ve been married two years and I haven’t made you watch it?” Patrick just shakes his head casually in response, but then David’s pressing the book into his hands. “Here. This is the one.”

For some reason Patrick is struck by it as he flips through; it’s a beautiful, illustrated edition, nothing like the thin, glossy volumes or the thick hardbacks with tiny type. “This is so different from the others,” he admits, and David gives a hum, coupled with a private little smile.

“It was my favorite when I was young,” he admits, and Patrick melts right there. David shoots him a look like he could have predicted that reaction as he starts putting all of Patrick’s rejects back on the shelf. “I haven’t read it in years.” Patrick doesn’t say anything back, but starts picking up books too, carefully putting them back in their place.

He keeps touching it throughout the day: the smooth cover, the sturdy spine. He tries to look absent-minded, as if he could distract himself and not think too much about it until bedtime, when he leaves it gingerly on David’s pillow. He takes in the way David’s brow furrows for a moment before he speaks.

“Read it to me.”

David looks incredulous, but the corners of his mouth slowly tug upward, like he’s honored at the mere suggestion. “I didn’t read you any of the others.”

“Maybe that was part of the problem,” Patrick says, casual. He moves towards the bathroom, calls over his shoulder, “Come on, you said yourself you haven’t read it in years!” and David softens slightly, like he’s considering it.

David is flipping through the pages when Patrick gets back, looking soft and shy. “Fine,” he says, looking up. “I guess we can try it.”

Patrick feels like a little kid, has to resist doing something silly like running over and jumping between the sheets the way he would have back then, even though that’s the level of excitement inside. David looks at him like he can tell, because they’ve been married long enough that he knows when Patrick’s trying to play it cool. Still, he lets Patrick snuggle into him, hand going immediately to the short hairs at the back of Patrick’s neck, scratching through them in a way that makes Patrick’s head loll back on instinct, relaxed.

David clears his throat in a way that almost feels self-conscious, and then starts on the first page: “This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.”

Patrick feels a curl of warmth around his heart.

After that first night, it becomes a routine. They brush their teeth, lock the doors, turn off the big light in favor of the small lamps, settle in between the covers and slip into another world for a while. Patrick loves the way David’s voice sounds when he reads, teases him about doing voices for the different characters but doesn’t really mean it. He wants to hear the way it all sounds to David, the way it might if he read it to himself.

Patrick finds himself looking forward to that time they get together every night. It slowly becomes his favorite part of the day. Safe in their bed, the lights low, David’s voice in his ear and warm beside him. The way his laughter shakes Patrick’s head on his shoulder. The way he’ll turn to Patrick tentatively after some chapters, asking, “One more?” (Patrick always says yes, always.) The goodnight kiss when they’re done, the way David will set the book aside and put his hands on Patrick, and the way Patrick will shiver, every time.

A week or so later Patrick has to go out of town for a weekend tax seminar. David tries to get him to take the book with him while he’s gone, because he knows Patrick has trouble sleeping when he’s away, but he brushes him off. “I’m not gonna read it without you, David,” he says as he throws clothes in his bag, frustrated at the mere suggestion, not even willing to consider the alternative. David blushes at the words and bites his lip hard, like for some reason he’s surprised and pleased at Patrick’s stubborn insistence.

Patrick loves every single second of the book. The thrill of the adventure, the pirates and sword fighting, the humor of it all, but also the romance. The _as you wish_ and the world’s most perfect kisses and the way he gets butterflies when Westley and Buttercup are reunited. The way his heart skips a beat in recognition when Buttercup confesses her feelings and David reads, “And with that, she dared the bravest thing she’d ever done; she looked right into his eyes.”

“They’re a little like us,” he says one night, cutting in. He’s always cutting in with his thoughts, and David pretends to be annoyed, but falls for it every time anyway, gets happily caught in the conversation. He just read a scene full of banter, and Patrick adores that, the way Westley and Buttercup never seem to pass up an opportunity to joke with each other, not in spite of their love but because of it.

David looks at him a little bit sideways. “Hm,” he allows, going for coy as he turns the page, but Patrick can tell he’s charmed at the comparison. He doesn’t ask for clarification, knowing instinctively what Patrick means, and that’s how he knows he agrees.

Patrick thinks it again as when they reach the epilogue, in particular the scene where they sleep together for the first time. It all seems so familiar, the bravado in it but also the tenderness, the way they continue to tease up until the last possible second. Hearing it all in David’s voice just makes it better because it sounds so much like what he would say: Westley asks, _do we begin standing up or lying down?_ and Buttercup says, _A very good question, that, there is great controversy as to which..._ There’s the way the scene slowly softens, the moment drawing out until they’re holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes, loving each other more than they ever have. The scene ignites and hums in Patrick’s chest, buzzing with warmth. It feels so recognizable, it feels like home.

It’s a slower read than David’s other choices because of the way they’ve gone about it, but when it’s done, Patrick still feels unprepared. He watches his husband close the book and thinks about the bedtime stories he was read when he was younger, probably until he was really too old for it. He doesn’t know for sure, but he feels like David didn’t get that same experience. He has the same look on his face like the whole thing is gone too soon. Patrick presses a kiss to David’s shoulder through his t-shirt, a little reminder he’s here, not to disappear too deep into his head.

“Well?” he murmurs, the same way David always did when Patrick finished reading one of his books.

David’s lips tip up into a slow smile as he looks down at him. “I loved it,” he says, quiet and sure, and Patrick smiles back, elated.

“Okay, really. Do you think we could be them?” Patrick asks, wanting to hold onto the moment just a little longer. He puts on a stuffy voice for Prince Humperdinck, a fakey accent. “‘The one couple in a century who has a real shot to make it?’”

“Only if I get to be Buttercup,” David says immediately, so certain and childish that it startles a laugh out of Patrick.

“That’s fine. I was always into pirates when I was younger, anyway.”

David raises a suggestive eyebrow at him, and Patrick grins before continuing. “What about Rob and Cassie? Murder Squad. What about then?”

David wrinkles his nose. “I think I would probably have to quit anyway because of the nature of the job, so. Yes, I would bravely leave the force to save our relationship,” he says, looking playful and pleased with himself.

“David and Giovanni?” Patrick fires back, and David sighs, rolling his eyes and pulling him closer.

“Yes, we could make it in 1950s Italy and if one of us travelled through time and if we were gay cowboys and even if you were a psychopath bent on framing me for murder, we would make it. Okay?” He says the last part more softly than the rest, as if he’s only just now figuring out this is what Patrick wanted all along: to be held in David’s arms and given a promise of many happy endings.

“Okay,” he agrees, just as quiet. David has an arm across his chest and Patrick clings onto it, laces their fingers together so he can press a kiss to David’s knuckles.

He knows it’s silly—he even knows it’s probably not true. He knows the odds, how hard it is to find someone in the right place at the right time. He knows that they are incredibly lucky to be who they are in the here and now, and knows there are ways they could have ended up with other lives.

But on the other hand, Patrick has this coping mechanism. He used it a lot in college, when he took one physics course (which he barely passed) and learned about multiverse theory. He doesn’t really get the ins and outs of it, but he likes the idea that there are an infinite number of universes parallel to this one that could potentially be anything. That could embody one of the other, incalculable possible routes humanity could have taken, or even a universe where a small choice or decision has affected everything, made it all different. There’s debate over the legitimacy of the theory, of course, and he’s sure his understanding is murky at best, but it still helps.

When there was something he was scared to do—whether they were words he was afraid to say, or a test he was nervous to take, or something else that pushed him out of his comfort zone—he’d reassure himself with the idea that there’s probably a universe out there where he had already done it, in some form. And so it made whatever the hard thing was easier in _this_ life, too. Because he wasn’t really doing it for the first time.

He thought of it the night he broke up with Rachel for good. He thought of it before he asked David out on his birthday. He thought of it before he came out to his parents.

And he thinks of it now, thinks of the thousands of parallel Patricks and Davids out there and where they’re falling in love. Some are probably in New York, or maybe Toronto. They’re falling in love in coffeeshops and in high school and in seedy bars. They’re falling in love in space, they’re falling in love after he’s married to Rachel, falling in love before David lost his money. But Patrick chooses to believe they’re falling in love every time, and they’ll do it a thousand more too. And they’re probably all fucking fantastic.

But personally, he’d pick this one, every time.

“You have to read the next one,” David says after a moment, and Patrick lights up inside at the words. Still, he tries to hide it as he sits up a little straighter, because this is an opening, something he can use to lighten the moment, voice going mischievous.

“Does that mean I get to pick _what_ we read?”

He can feel David slump behind him, the groan starting in his gut and rumbling out of him, and Patrick has to shuffle around in the bed, dislodging David’s arm around him so he can see his face.

“Oh my god, this is going to be so great. What do you think we should start with, _The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People_? _Freakonomics_? _Moneyball_?” He knows David would let him read whatever he wanted, but he would never torture David with any of them, really; he’s doesn’t even have _Moneyball_ on his shelf anymore (as much as he loves baseball, he has no interest in spoiling the magic of it, plus, _The Only Rule Is it Has To Work_ was much better version of a similar story anyway). He’s pretty sure he has a copy of Carl Sagan’s _Cosmos_ , though, he thinks he could talk David into that.

David sinks deeper into the bed, hiding his head in his hands. “You’re impossible,” he murmurs between his fingers.

Patrick laughs, drawing his husband’s hands away from his face so he can lean down and drop a featherlight kiss on his lips. “Okay fine, how about we go to the library and pick something new together. It can be a—” he gives him another kiss, this time lingering a little longer because somehow David has wormed a hand onto the back of his neck without him noticing, “—compromise, since I hear you’re so good at those.”

David smiles against his lips, cheek dimpling slightly and the corners of his eyes going crinkled. “That’s an old line, honey.”

Patrick leans in so he’s almost kissing David again, lips just a breath apart. “I think it still works,” he murmurs, and then he feels David’s breath catch, and melts into him.

And Patrick thinks, the same way as he has almost every time he kisses David lately, _Well, this one left them all behind_.

//

_“She loves you," the Prince cried. "She loves you still and you love her, so think of that—think of this too: in all this world, you might have been happy, genuinely happy. Not one couple in a century has that chance, not really, **no matter what the storybooks say**...”_

//

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> P.S. I have been applying Richard Siken to every pairing I love since about 2011, but the end of "You Are Jeff" fits David and Patrick better than all the rest. There is a lovely [edit](https://stassischrodinger.tumblr.com/post/185576164117/crush-by-richard-siken) that will make you cry. 
> 
> As always, you can follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/wardowedidit), where I am frequently a Richard Siken poetry stan account. :)


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